Two Nights Left, 4.5 Tons of Candy, and a Palm Oil Rule

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo has two nights of Boo at the Zoo left: Friday, October 30 and Saturday, October 31, each running from 4 to 8:30 p.m. Friday is sold out for tickets that include on-site parking, but rideshare tickets are still available for that night, and the zoo says there are plenty of tickets left for Halloween itself.

The event is the zoo’s fall tradition, held on a mountainside above Colorado Springs, and it is built around trick-or-treating at more than twenty stations spread through the grounds. Around that there are lit decorations, a silent disco and yard games in the Necks’ Door Pavilion, a magic show inside Magic Manor at the Lodge at Moose Lake, giant wooden pumpkins, and handmade decorations the zoo’s own staff put together.

What is open, and which animals are out

Select animal habitats stay open through the evening, with giraffe and budgie feeding running all night and scheduled keeper demonstrations on both dates. On Friday that is a giraffe keeper talk at 5 p.m. at the Giraffe Training Center and a hippo keeper talk and feeding at 6:30 inside the hippo building at Water’s Edge: Africa. On Saturday the 5 p.m. giraffe talk repeats and the 6:30 slot goes to a mountain goat talk in the upper yard, across from the Cozy Goat Coffee Shop. The Mountaineer Sky Ride runs as well, weather permitting.

The zoo closes for daytime admission at 2 p.m. on Boo dates to turn the place over for the evening, and the event runs rain, snow or shine. At that altitude in late October, the advice to dress for it is not boilerplate.

Four and a half tons of candy, bought on a rule

The zoo will hand out 4.5 tons of candy across the trick-or-treat stations, and it buys all of it from companies that belong to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and have committed to sourcing palm oil responsibly. Palm oil plantations are a principal driver of forest clearance in orangutan range, which is why a zoo that keeps orangutans pays attention to who made the candy it buys by the ton.

Cheyenne Mountain has turned that into something a visitor can use. Its free PalmOil Scan app lets shoppers scan a product barcode and see how that company ranks on sustainable palm oil sourcing, which converts a policy most people cannot act on into a decision they can make in a grocery aisle.

What to know before you go

Costume rules are stricter than at a neighborhood Halloween. Guests aged 12 and over may not wear full-face masks or carry costume weapons. Masks on children 11 and under must leave the eyes visible and must not block peripheral vision. Balloons are not allowed inside the zoo at all, even as part of a costume, for the safety of the animals in the collection and the wildlife around the mountain.

Boo at the Zoo is also a fundraiser, and a significant one. Cheyenne Mountain Zoo receives no tax support, so admission to the event goes to animal care, conservation work and improvements to the grounds. Timed tickets with on-site parking for Halloween night, and rideshare tickets for both nights, are on sale now.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo published the details of the final weekend on October 27, with ticketing at cmzoo.org/boo. The zoo’s giraffe herd, which guests feed through the evening at this event, moved into a purpose-built home this fall when its new giraffe center opened in September.